This invention relates in general to chewing gum compositions, in particular to an improvement that includes adding to a chewing gum porous polymeric beads that have microporous passages impregnated with one or more active chewing gum ingredients.
Chewing gum basically includes a neutral and essentially tasteless masticatory chewing gum base and one or more non-masticatory active ingredients mixed into the base. Active ingredients are ingredients such as sweeteners, flavoring agents, flavor enhancers and potentiators and food-grade acids that determine flavor and taste characteristics of the gum. Other active ingredients include medicinal or pharmaceutical agents, or breath-freshening ingredients which treat or reduce bad breath. In addition, the chewing gum may and usually does contain water-soluble and usually sweet non-masticatory bulking agents, coloring agents, and plasticizing agents, the latter improving the texture of the gum.
However, many ingredients with some degree of water solubility in gum tend to be extracted quickly from the gum when it is first being chewed. Such water-soluble ingredients include, of course, the sweeteners, food acids, and some flavor components such as esters. When these ingredients are extracted quickly, the resulting gum has substantially lost its taste.
Conversely, hydrophobic ingredients, especially flavoring agents, tend to become entrapped in gum base and are not readily released. Once the free flavor oil is extracted in the early chew, the remaining entrapped oil contributes little to flavor perception.
In addition, active ingredients may react with each other. For example, the artificial sweetener aspartame (L-aspartyl-L-phenylaline-methyl-ester) has been found to react with certain aldehydes present in certain flavoring agents such as cherry and cinnamon flavors. Aspartame stability is also a function of water activity, time, temperature and pH. Under unfavorable conditions, aspartame quickly loses its sweetness.
While there have been efforts to develop gums which do not rapidly lose their taste, and have improved ingredient stability, there is an ongoing effort to find commercially practicable improved release agents for control and release of active chewing gum ingredients and/or preventing active chewing gum ingredients from reacting with each other.